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1st Charles Reinke, with a 4-1 +513 record, came in first, which you probably had already figured out, considering that this is the first paragraph. He won 422-381 against Dave in the first round, with Dave playing DEXTROSE and Charles playing ENACTION and IMBECILE. Remember, it's not nice to call your opponents names over the Scrabble board. In the second round he played as the "one" in a two-on-one, and won both games. He outbingoed his opponent 3-0 in each, but the final scores were very different. He won big against Mary by scoring a whopping 601 points (featuring an appropriate bingo of DOMINATE), and against Bryan, could barely eke out a 392-389 victory. He had another close game in the next game, but this time he was on the wrong side of it, losing to Thomas 442-449. He bingoed early with RETINUE and KYANISE, but Thomas had OLEFINE, ENTAILS (later extended to VENTAILS), and the game-saving find of CEREBRIC. In the final game, he won against Helen 463-317, playing only one bingo, OVERSET. Sources close to the situation tell me that he passed up on the valid REEKERS. "One that reeks". Come on.

2nd Thomas Reinke also went 4-1, but with a seriously inferior and honestly pathetic +347 spread. He sat down to face James in the first round, but was abruptly pressed into service to play a late-arriving Richard as well. The game against James ended as a 453-338 win, but the shock at Richard's arrival led him to a 390-402 loss. Richard bingoed three times, with STOREMAN, RICHENS, and TRIPPING for 98, while Thomas could only manage ESTREAT. Against Dave in the next game, he started off with UNMOLTEN, and also added SOOTIER and WAFFLER (n. one who waffles). That last one was 119 points, accounting for a big part of the 494-310 win. After his 449-442 win against Charles, he faced Bryan in the final game. After plenty of bingos, power-tile plays, and frustrated sighs, Thomas came out on top 514-461. He played four bingos: PARGETS, OEDIPEAN (adj. pertaining to the Oedipus complex), REGATTA (a word, it was pointed out, that was played by Bryan in his first ever club game), and BINATELY.

3rd Aaron Bader came in third with a 3-1 +323 record. In the first game he faced Mark (spoiler alert: he plays Mark in all the other rounds as well) and won 526-300. He had one normal bingo, ENGINOUS, as well as two abnormal Collins-only ones, SLARTED* (anagram DARTLES) and ESSIVES*. Things were a lot closer in the next game, but he managed to pull out a 425-411 win by closing the board so much that Mark was unable to bingo with his final double-blank racks. Mark did play the word of the week, BONSPIEL, in that game. Aaron suffered his only loss of the night in the third round, 419-454, as Mark's late COHUNES (n. COHUNE, a palm tree, also CAHOUN) scored way too many points (86) to come back from. In the last round, he double-doubled early with TETANOID (adj. resembling tetanus) through Mark's ANGUIPED* and later played REGESTS*.

Honorable mentions: Gail and Helen both went 3-1 as well, but missed out on getting paragraphs of their own due to some esoteric (and discriminatory) concept known as "spread".

1st Charles Reinke came in first with a 4-1 +502 record. He got an early start on Indepence Day with some fireworks of his own in the first game, as he played five bingos against James in a 567-302 win. Those bingos: OSCULAR, OUTLEARN, IDOCRASE (a mineral also known as VESUVIANITE), WEIGHTS, and UNPLOWED. He then faced two players at once, but this wasn't a usual two-on-one pairing: he was facing Thomas and Bryan, two very tough players. He won against Bryan 463-352, outdoing Bryan's KITTENS with his own ALANINE and CLAVIER. He wasn't so lucky against Thomas, though a late bingo of REGINAS for 94 prevented the game from being a total blowout, with the final being 489-434 in favor of Thomas. In round three, he faced Betty and won 441-297, with bingos of OPULENT and SALINITY. Unforunately for Bryan, he was forced to play Charles a second time in the final round, and the result was again not in his favor, 473-436. Bryan played DOMINATE, INERRANT, and REALISES, while Charles had bingos of VERBENAS and AVERTER.

2nd Thomas Reinke put together a solid-but-not-solid-enough-for-first-place 4-1 +414 night, good for second place. He started off playing in a two-on-one, against Helen and Betty. He exited the round with 389 points of spread, an impressive feat marred slightly by his phony QUOTINGS* for 107 against Helen. In the next game he was the beneficiary of his opponent's divided attention, as he beat Charles 489-434 with bingos of BOTTLING, DREAREST, and ENTERIC. He walso the beneficiary of his opponents's divided attention in the third round, but even with that advantage, he couldn't beat Aaron in a Collins dictionary battle, losing 382-461. He played another game of Collins in the final round, this time against Mark. Things worked out better for him in this one, as he found out that if you just draw a bunch of bingos that are already good in the American dictionary, you can win despite a large vocabulary deficit. The final was 492-443, with his bingos being MELODIA, CORDAGE, and INFLATOR. Mark played two Collins-only bingos, PETERMEN* and ENCARPUS* (n. a frieze decoration of festooned fruit, and here all my frieze decorations of fruit were blatantly unfestooned like I'm some sort of cultureless heathen).

3rd Aaron Bader went 3-1 +215 in his weekly Collins match with Mark (rudely interrupted by an interloper), finishing in third. He won the opener 480-318, with bingos of ADUSTING* (ADUST is good in our dictionary but is only an adjective), KERNELS, and EMBOWELS. For reference BOWEL, EMBOWEL, DISBOWEL, and DISEMBOWEL all mean the same thing, and it's not a good thing either. His second game with Mark was marked (get it?!?!?!?) by his triple-triple of HONOREES through the N in Mark's just-played NOTICERS. That play was 158 points by itself, which directly led to a 500-404 win. He played two in the third round, a tough task when the opponents are Thomas and Mark, but club leadership maintains that the task could have been made much tougher with the addition of a blindfold, the temporary removal from the dictionary of all words containing an "E", and intermittent proddings with sharp implements. In any case, he beat Thomas 461-382 with normal bingos of RAIDERS, COEDITED, and SERENATA. Against Mark, he lost 399-521, his bingos of BHEESTIE and PICANTE losing out to Mark's INCHTAPE*, LARDOONS, FASTINGS, and GROUTIER.

1st Charles Reinke averaged a nifty 505 points per game as he strolled to a perfect 4-0 record. Creepily, his point spread of +505 was the same as his per-game average (cue X-Files music). By far his closest game, and also his only game below 500, was in round one against Gail Salm. She stayed even with him for most of the way and equalled his bingo output, playing AERIEST and TINDERS against Charles' SURGEON and SAVORING. It was then that the carnage truly began; Charles had three 500-point games in a row and played at least three bingos in all of them. He felled expert-level nemesises Bryan Benwitz (500-390) and Thomas Reinke (554-407) in rapid succession, although the latter game was spoiled by a phony AMMONIAL* on Charles' end. The perfect record was sealed with a 549-319 victory over Dennis Lloyd, whose early bingo of DUALISTS was no match for Charles' torrent of bingos (PENTANOL, IRONIZED, GAUNTER, and the new word HANGRIER).

2nd Aaron Bader played his customary four rounds of Collins-fueled Scrabble against Mark Kenas and performed well enough to snag second place with a 3-1 +219 record. His first game, a 446-364 win, was the only one in which he got to play a Collins-only bingo, REMEDIAT# (players of the American dictionary should note that DIAMETER and DIATREME are available in those letters). Mark answered back with a 442-385 victory where both players stuck with high-probability American words (BLEATER and TENNIST for Mark, SOARERS and REARGUED for Aaron). That was where Mark's good fortunes ran out, as he dropped the next two to Aaron by scores of 377-485 and 373-459. In that last game, Mark got away with the phony-in-every-dictionary FELDGANZ* (GANZFELD is good), but justice was served as he met defeat in the end (thanks to Aaron's bingos of URINATES, GRUELER, and UNIVERSE).

3rd Richard Lauder beat out Thomas Reinke for third place by just 40 spread points, finishing at 3-1 +53. He started the night with a 387-365 victory against Helen Flores, who at least got to play the strange-looking ERRATICS (while Richard got GRANTEES). The nascent dreams of a perfect night were dashed, however, in round two, as Richard lost to Thomas Reinke 312-411. Richard did achieve some sort of victory in that one as he outbingoed Thomas two to one, getting down COLORISE and INSNARE to Thomas' singular UNADOPTED. In the next round, Richard notched his first victory against Bryan Benwitz since September of last year, 434-407. HAYWIRES and STORMING were Richard's bingos. Seeing a spot in the writeup close at hand, Richard clinched a top-three performance by taking down Gail Salm in the final round by a score of 424-321. Being mentioned in the writeup confers a level of celebrity that few mortals can ever hope to reach, so Richard's probably feeling pretty good about himself right now.

Also of note is the fact that three nine-letter words were played during the course of the session: Thomas Reinke's UNADOPTED, Aaron Bader's TINCTURES, and Dave Gilligan's REFIGURES. Nine-letter (and longer) bingos only comprise 0.64% of the bingos played at our club, so 3/70 (or 4.29%) is way above average!